Mystery Island

April 6
Mystery Island

Mystery Island is a tiny little island pretty much designed for cruise ships. I tendered ashore with Terry and we set off to do some exploring and swimming at this tiny little place.
The island was gorgeous though, absolutely picture perfect and just what you might imagine the south Pacific to be. There wasn’t much on the island aside for a few stands that get set up specifically for ship tourists. Terry and I walked around the entire island, stopping at a couple places to swim, just a nice lazy sort of day. The highlight, however, was when we came across the Caribbean band from the ship who were sitting down at the water cracking open coconuts on the rocks and eating them (talk about a stereotype). Well that’s just the sort of thing that I was interested in doing, so I went with one of the guys, helped him bring back some coconuts after he climbed a tree and knocked them down, and went to the beach for some fresh coconut water. They showed me how to crack it the proper way (of which takes almost no skill) and I was soon enjoying my local drink. It was just another of those classic/authentic moments that I really like having that made everything perfect right then.
This was followed by another beach stop. Terry hung around for a bit but I wanted to stay and hang on that beach as long as possible and enjoy the area. There’s not much you can really say about sitting on a beach to make it sound interesting, but the one thing that was really cool was that as soon as Terry left and I laid quiet for a few minutes, a dozen little crabs emerged from the sand thinking no one else was around. It was almost Zen-like watching these crabs go to work on their little holes. They’d continuously go in and out of the holes, and with each exit, throw as much sand as their legs could hold out and away from their humble abodes. Then, a large wave would come, which they’d see immediately, and at lightning speed they’d run back to their hole, the wave would go over, and they’d pop back out and start throwing sand all over again. This made me contemplate the origin of the word “crabby”, to which I figured if my home was basically washed away every couple minutes, I wouldn’t be in such a great mood either. This stupid conclusion humored me and I continued watching. I eventually changed position and stood over a gigantic hole where I’d seen the Daddy of all sand crabs going in and out of. After another couple minutes of waiting, the small crabs decided to reemerge, but Poppa Crab who I was so eager to see up close, would do nothing more than pop his head out of his hole and immediately duck back in after seeing a large figure positioned directly overtop of him. I figure that’s the reason he got so big…caution.
Anyway, enough about the crabs. I made my way back to the ship thoroughly amused, hopped on the tender and said good bye to Mystery Island. All in all it was a nice relaxing day, one where you didn’t have a choice but to just sit down and enjoy just being where you were. Thanks for reading!